Free Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald

scribbling figures, both barking replies. It was hard work, like playing a ball without bounce. It was all restricted to pounds, shillings and pence; to bullock wagons and weeks on the road; to sloops gone aground with their cargoes ruined and unwilling insurers. Covington carried a silver ear trumpet in a kidskin bag, but never used it. It was an advanced model, made to the latest design in London. He said he could have it manufactured in Sydney if he liked, and plenty would buy it, but had an aversion to forcing on others what was useless to himself.
    â€˜Such as your tale of woe?’ MacCracken riposted.
    â€˜What’s that you say?’
    â€˜Have you never killed a small bird with a hat?’
    â€˜Nay, not with a hat,’ said Covington sourly. ‘Not flippantly like you, doctor .’
    â€˜ What—is—it—about—you? ’ MacCracken demanded, in a voice that made his brandy balloons ring.
    â€˜I am afraid to know,’ replied Covington. There were tears in his eyes. MacCracken dropped his irritation, and embraced him as he farewelled him at the door. ‘I have been a collector in my life,’ said Covington. ‘Birds and insects, small and large. Fossils. Mammals. Corals. You get so you forget what is man. You start to think, “Man? Why, he is just a stack of bones.”’
    â€˜Dear Mr Covington, dear broken old heart,’ said MacCracken. ‘Tell me your tale. Trust me.’
    Covington made a sound like a bull-seal smacking rubbery lips. ‘Hmm?’ Whether the plea reached him was irrelevant. Because the leaden door of deafness slammed shut. Because he tugged a lock of hair in ironical farewell. Because he trotted off into the dusk, a swirl of insects around his head, and gave those bothersome gnats all his attention.
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    Nurse Parkington urged on Covington a walking cure after giving him a good pummelling using pungent oils and the power of her mannish arms. Going about on his long, strong legs, Covington in a wide hat was like a patch of cloud-shadow on the headlands, trailing small boys who brought him bugs and rocks and other interesting finds. He could not stop himself peering, and MacCracken thought he was like someone hoping to find gold, he was so persistent in his hobby. What did he keep in his pockets? There was often a reek of raw spirits about him. He clinked and clanked like a bottle-oh. MacCracken saw him on thesandstone escarpment plucking at beetles. He saw him crossing the heath. He saw him up on the roadway, near the lighthouse, beating shrubbery with a stick and stirring up butterflies. He saw him coming down.
    Steadiness and accumulation of effort defined Covington just as lightness of mind and quick snobberies defined MacCracken. Black boys threw pebbles on Covington’s back to get his attention. Those narrowed eyes, all their shine burned out, turned upon miscreants and were calm the way a coral lagoon is calm in a ring of storm.
    You may wonder why MacCracken thought Covington’s collecting activities unremarkable in the man, even after his outburst at the door, and confronted with Covington’s confessions still didn’t know what he was talking about. The answer is that he ascribed them to fashion. Beetles were the wonder of the day in the Australian colonies through every class of immigrant. Stark wonder was the mood in the forest and in the house, with every piece of bark and every cookpot lid and plate left lying around lifted to reveal a creature never sighted before by civilised man and waving its feelers. There was a special pride among the takers of the place, because the plants and animals were so strange. Everything so queer and opposite. There must have been a separate act of Creation, it was maintained, and as Darwin had said on visiting there, to bring them into being. Swans were black. A mammal, the platypus, laid eggs, although nobody had ever seen one do it except the black fellows, who were